Many contact centers employ predictive dialers to process a list of telephone numbers and originate telemarketing telephone calls for a group of agents with the goal of minimizing agents' waiting times. Typically, predictive dialers accomplish this by “dialing ahead.” That is, they originate more calls than there are currently available agents based on an expectation that some calls will result in encountering a busy condition, no-answer condition, disconnected status, or being answered by an answering machine or voice mail service. In these instances, such calls do not need to be connected to an agent and hence not every call placed by the predictive dialer will need to be connected to an agent. In addition, predictive dialing is also predicated on agents completing existing calls and therefore becoming available in the near future. Thus, a predictive dialer can originate more calls than there are currently available agents and maintain the likelihood that a live person who has answered a call will be connected with minimal delay to an available agent.
In many instances, the goal of connecting answered calls with minimal delay is at odds with effectively utilizing agents. For example, multiple calls may be made without having the appropriate number of agents available, but with the expectation that agents may become available. As a result, the pool of available agents may be insufficient to immediately connect each encountered called party that has answered a call. That is, the predictive dialer may originate a call that is answered by a live called party but may not have an available agent to connect the live called party with. In such situations, the predictive dialer may terminate the call or an announcement may be played requesting the called party to wait for an agent. These situations result in what is referred to as an abandoned call and are considered annoying to many.
In response, governmental regulations have been implemented to limit the occurrence of abandoned calls for telemarketing purposes. Accordingly, a telemarketer exceeding the applicable abandonment limit (e.g., rate) can potentially receive significant fines. With that said, however, governmental regulations can vary with respect to the state to which telephone calls are placed. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has set a limit on how often an abandoned call can occur. The FTC requires that at least ninety-seven percent of a telemarketer's calls that are answered by a called party be connected to an agent within two seconds after the called party answers. This equates to an abandonment rate of three percent. In contrast, the state of California requires that at least ninety-nine percent of a telemarketer's calls that are answered by a called party be connected to an agent within two seconds after the called party answers. Therefore, the state of California requires a smaller abandonment rate of one percent than the FTC's three percent abandonment rate.
For contact centers conducting outbound telemarketing campaigns, there may be instances in which multiple governmental regulations apply to a particular campaign. For example, a contact center may be conducting an outbound call campaign for an insurance company and the campaign may be targeting potential customers on the West Coast of the United States. Thus, in this instance, the contact center may be placing calls to telephone numbers in states such as Oregon and Washington in which a three percent abandonment rate applies and placing calls to telephone numbers in California in which a one percent abandonment rate applies. Therefore, a need exists in the art for conducting outbound campaigns in which multiple abandonment rates apply and ensuring that the contact center complies with applicable governmental regulations with respect to the multiple abandonment rates. It is with regard to this and other aspects that the present disclosure is presented.